I’ve been wondering for a while just how long it would take for Obesity to move from being a medical issue to a social one, it seems we are right now on that cusp. Obesity has had so much bad publicity – deservingly so – over the past 5 years that the obese are striking back, no longer satisfied with the social stigma, and often unable to lose the weight, the obese are becoming a large majority.

Fat activist Jackie Wykes recently posted a volatile question via theconversation.edu.au, asking How Anti Obesity Campaigns Re-inforce Stigma. Ms Wykes says “By focusing on weight as the problem and weight loss as the solution, social and economic inequalities are made invisible.” I’d reckon that in this country at least – and the world generally – supermarkets would disagree entirely, never have groceries – fresh included – ever been so inexpensive, there is literally NO excuse today for BAD EATING HABITS!

According to Ms Wykes, health disparities between groups are blamed on individuals for not making healthy choices, ignoring the ways that the choices available to comfortably middle-class white Australians are often very different to those available to people on low incomes, to recent immigrants, or to Indigenous Australians.

This rhetoric clearly scirts the issue – yes obese people have rights, more rights than drug addicts, less than breast cancer patients, and about the same as rights as smokers – in my mind the formula is pretty simple, EAT LESS! If you wish to make the argument complicated – it’s still diet based for the majority of obesity – then EAT CAREFULLY! :: Read the full article »»»»

A third of the world’s adult population is physically inactive, the couch-potato lifestyle kills about 5 million people every year, experts contributing to a special feature in the medical journal The Lancet say.

“Roughly three of every 10 individuals aged 15 years or older – about 1.5 billion people – do not reach present physical activity recommendations,” Dr Pedro Hallal and colleagues said in a report that described the problem as a pandemic.

Inactivity was described for the study as failing to do 30 minutes of moderate physical activity five times a week, 20 minutes of vigorous activity three times a week, or a combination of the two :: Read the full article »»»»

Several conspicuous academics have sent letters to prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, claiming prominent psychiatric Professor Ian Hickie had a serious conflict of interest in his review of a new drug, Valdoxan. Professor Hickie, who is from Sydney’s Brain and Mind Institute and one of eight new national mental health commissioners, says he is the victim of a campaign to discredit his work.

Hickie has also been accused of down playing the side effects of Valdoxan, an antidepressant marketed for the treatment of major depressive disorder. So far six letters, in response to the Hickie review, have been published in The Lancet, all of which are critical. Hickie and his co-author Naomi Rogers have both replied to the criticism.